The Reckoning

DEFIANT: Journalist Niezabitowska, at home beneath portraits of her ancestors insists she's been wrongly accused

As a crusading reporter for Poland's opposition Solidarity Weekly in the 1980s, Malgorzata Niezabitowska was among the most prominent voices of the revolution. She wrote exposés about illegal demonstrations and military crackdowns. With her husband, photographer Tomasz Tomaszewski, she chronicled the darkest days of martial law, smuggling her diaries (written under a pseudonym) and photos of tanks in the streets out of the country to a world hungry for news of Poland's awakening dissent. Later, in 1989, she was appointed spokeswoman for the government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Poland's first democratically elected Prime Minister. Niezabitowska's charisma and no-nonsense demeanor stood in marked...